you took my heart in 1979

I bumped into an old friend on the tram this morning. I haven’t seen him since I moved from Brunswick about 9 months ago. This isn’t to say that I haven’t thought about him. In my less cluttered and flustered moments I have found myself thinking about him, hoping that he is well, warm and safe from harm. A couple of months ago, a comedian with appalling facial hair wrote an article about my friend in a Saturday paper which upset me greatly, it’s one thing to make an unjudging comment about someone’s slightly eccentric behaviour which I am aware I am doing now – it’s another to blatantly poke fun at my friend to entertain readers. As fate would have it, a few weeks later I had the opportunity to give this comedian a piece of my mind and did so – full of glee.

My friend is noisy, warm, and obnoxious. He cares little for what others think of him and I revel in his open displays of disdain and happiness and this morning he was at his finest. I sat opposite him and looked up – I was happy to see him, and see him looking quite well. I have no way of contacting him so these fated sightings bring me peace of mind. He looked directly at me, smiled and asked me “where have you been?” I said to him “Hello, I’ve been around, where have you been?” He replied with a cheeky smile and said “you know where I have been! Fixing my time machine!” Of course he has! Where else would my friend be?

He filled me in on the latest modifications to his time machine whilst the man in the suit sitting next to me sniggered into his coffee. My friend remembered something and became very animated, he proclaimed “That’s right! You took my heart in 1979! You took it! With the key! You took my heart in 1979!” Anyone who knows me away from the ramblings of this blog will know that this is not possible for I am a child of the excessive eighties… Nevermind fact- my friend was convinced that I took his heart in 1979, and told everyone on the tram.

I’m sure by now you have probably worked out that my friend is quite mentally unwell and when I do see him, it is in between his admissions to psychiatric wards and hostels. He has been a victim of the overstretched mental health system for the four years that I have “known” him and at times, I find his situation very hard to cope with. Sometimes my friend is clean, sometimes my friend is dirty, sometimes he looks a little more unsettled than usual but he always has a smile on his face… After his great announcement, my friend lept from the tram and wandered off. The man in the suit turned to me and said sarcastically “Must be your lucky day eh?” and I replied with a smile “well, it must be. It’s not everyday a gentleman accuses you of taking his heart and key.”

cmx